Unit 4 Body language

The first Period  Warming up & Reading

By: 刘芝

Teaching goals:

1. Enable the students to realize the importance of body language.

2. Help the students learn how to explain the common idea--"different cultures, different body languages" with the target language in this unit.

Teaching Important Points:

1．Teach the students how to understand body language used in different countries or cultures as well as in different occasions.

2.     How does body language differ among people from different cultures?

Teaching Difficult Points:

  1. Let the students know that there is both positive body language and negative body language.

2.     The understanding of the poorly-written reading text.

Teaching Methods:  

 Skimming method, task-based method, role-play method.

Teaching Aids:

 A recorder, a projector, a computer, and the blackboard 

Teaching Procedures:

Step I. Lead-in  

T: Today, we are going to learn Unit 4 Body language. And can you tell me what the purpose of language is?

Ss: Communicating.

T: Yes, communicating. And do you know how many ways of communicating there are in the world? Can you give some examples?

Ss: Spoken language, written language …

T: Yes. And what about body language? Do you know what this gesture means?

Ss: I love you.

T: Great! What is posture? Who is he in the picture?

Ss: Mr Bean.

T: Yes, Mr Bean. As we know, he can performance many kinds of postures. Using some postures, we can show our feelings without speaking. Now look at this picture, can you guess how is he felling now?

Ss: Sad.

T: Can you guess what he may want to say?

Ss: Oh, my god.

T: What about this picture?

Ss: …

T: And what is facial expressions? That is, we express our feelings using our face, whenever we are happy, sammy, sad or angry. Here, how is he felling now?

Ss: Happy.

T: And maybe he wants to say …

Ss: …

T: And what is gesture? Yes, we express what we want to say using our hands. Now, can you guess what does she mean?

Ss: …

Step II. Comparison

T: Just now, we got to know that we can use some gesture to express a certain meaning. Now, I have got another question for you. Does the same gesture always have the same meaning?

Ss: No.

T: Why? Can you give me some examples?

Ss: …

T: Now, let me see how much you know about it. Let’s fill in the chart together.

Ss: …

T: Good. Now, we know that not all the gestures always have the same meaning. While, in the other hand, does the same meaning always use the same gesture to express?

Ss: No.

T: Can you show me some examples? Here, let’s fill in the chart together.

Ss: …

T: Good. So far, we’ve learnt that not all the gestures always have the same meaning, and the same meaning doesn’t use the same gesture to express. Why?

Ss: Because they are from different countries and different cultures.

T: Great! Now let’s do comparison work. Let’s compare the gestures in the U.S.A. with the gestures in China. In China, if we want to say “…”, , how to make the gesture?

Ss: …

T: What about in the U.S.A.?

Step III. Skimming

T: Till now, we can make a conclusion: different culture, different body language. Now, just suppose. If a person can speak English very well, but doesn’t know much about body language, can he/she communicate with foreigners perfectly or very well?

Ss: No.

T: Right, just because of different culture, different body language, we should not only learn to speak English as well as we can, but also get hang of the body language. Now, do you want to know more about different culture, different body langrage?

Ss: Yes.

T: Well, let’s turn to page 25. Go through the text as fast as you can, then, do the multiple choices on the screen.

Ss: …

Step IV. Scanning

[First, get the students to read the text again and play the tape for them to follow, and then work together with their partners so as to grasp the general idea of the text.]

T: What do you expect to know at the sight of the title "Communication: No Problem?"? Now please skim the passage to get a general understanding of the whole passage. While reading, please try to divide the whole passage into several parts and find out the main idea of each part (helping the students to fulfill the task if necessary).

  Part 1 (Para. l): You are sent to Pudong Airport to meet business people.

  Part 2 (Paras.2 and 3): Examples of learned or cultural "body language".

  Part 3 (Paras.4 and 5): Different peoples have different body language.

  Part 4 (para.6): Summary of body language.

T: Now class, what does the text mainly tell us about?

S1: It tells us the importance of "body language".

S2: It tells us the necessity of getting to know "body language".

S3: It tells us the differences of "body language" between different cultures.

S4: It shows us some concrete cases in which "body language" is used.

Step IV. Careful reading

T: Very good. Now let's get down to the detailed parts of the text. Look at the following chart. Try to fill in the missing parts according to the text.   

Step V. Summary

T: What can we learn from this lesson?

S1: When communicating with others, we can use not only spoken language, written language, but also body language, such as postures, facial expressions, gestures and so on.

S2. Body language divides from culture to culture. Sometimes, the same gesture has different meanings, while sometimes, some different gestures have the same meaning. So we should always remember: different culture, different body language. Wish you can do better and better in communicating.

T: Very good!

Step VI. Homework

1. Preview the language points in the text

2. Do Ex. 1&2 on Page 26-27.